Well, the New Japan Cup full show reviews lasted for three whole shows before reality finally caught up to me. Here’s the good news Happy Wrestling Fans, I did match write-ups for everything following those first three nights and maaaan, was it a lot of fun. This whole tournament has been on a completely different level this year in terms of match quality and booking.
Obviously, Zackattack’s super push is the big story but there was a lot more going on: our lord and savior Tanahashi returning from his time off and trying to steal the show with incredible performances, mid-level guys like Juice Robinson, SANADA and freaking YOSHI-HASHI busting ass and looking like contenders, HEAVYWEIGHT TAICHI. So much cool stuff being setup for the next few months.
If you want to catch up before digging in: Night 1 / 2 /3 full show reviews are right here.
Toru Yano vs. Davey Boy Smith Jr (Round 1)
This had a few moments of Yano comedy gold, but was mostly boring and literally a chore to sit through whenever Davey was on offense for an extended period of time. The guy just does nothing of interest. For me, he always works better for me with Archer in tag matches. I did appreciate the countout finish as it was less obvious than the usual Yano flash pin. **
SANADA vs. Chuckie T (Round 1)
From Twitter Superstar to NJPW main eventer: the life and times of Chuckie T. In all seriousness, SANADA and Chuckie T working a full-on New Japan main event and getting the crowd to go nuts is a wild thing. They really went all out and had a bunch of solid Indie Dream Match wrestling, complete with the armdrag/dropkick/standoff exchange straight out of 2001. Dug all the work around the table spot (Chuckie screaming ‘’I’M A DEATH MATCH LEGEND’’ was amazing), Chuckie’s crazy-ass tope con hilo over the guardrail and SANADA kicking out of the Awful Waffle for a monster pop.
SANADA’s growth as a top-of-the-line New Japan wrestler is pretty fascinating. He wrestled like a freaking robot for most of last year, but now he’s a lot more in tune with the crowd, playing to the fans and just doing more fun shit like trying to put Chuckie in a Paradise lock on the floor next to Milano (Milano trying to explain to SANADA how to properly apply the hold = GOLD). His post-match promo, new catch phrase (SEE YOU NEXT TIME) and nonchalant hand slapping on his way out clearly hints at a subtle move towards tweener-babyface territory. FUN! ***1/2
Michael Elgin vs. Juice Robinson (Round 2)
I liked this one a little more than the Elgin/Ishii first round match, but barely. God bless Juice Robinson, who put in another great performance that kept the match from fully turning into another boring Elgin Finisher-Fest. A real masterclass from the Juiceman in how to tell a story through facial expressions, body language and selling. His looks of pure desperation whenever Elgin would kick out were fantastic, as were the loopy blank stares after Elgin would nuke him with some big head-droppy thing (basically half the match).
Meanwhile, Elgin keeps insisting on filling his entire move-set with finisher-level moves and it is the most ridiculous shit. The guy is literally a bad Fire Pro Wrestling CAW come to life. Turnbuckle Death Valley Bomb, Tiger Driver and Half-nelson suplex as mid-match offense. Sure, buddy. It’s quite telling that the crowd responded more to a simple, well-timed lariat than to any of these head-drops. The small package finish worked well in the context of the stupid finisher accumulation, but I would’ve preferred a more decisive win for Juice. Dude deserves it. ***1/4
Hiroshi Tanahashi vs. Bad Luck Fale (Round 2)
Tana and Fale worked their usual G1 Climax match and it’s a match I dig a lot. Great chemistry between these two guys. Totally old-school David/Goliath confrontation with Fale using his size advantage and Tanahashi having to work extra hard to pull off the most simple spots. Fale played his monster role perfectly and really laid in those corner Vader hammers at one point. Tana’s gone on record saying Inoki/Vader ’96 was his favorite match of all time and he literally takes a page from it here with a KILLER GERMAN SUPLEX on Fale. Also loved Fale making the Sling Blade look like death and bumping his ass off for the over-the-top-rope lariat. Finally, this had one of the smartest countout finishes I’ve ever seen, with the crowd popping huge instead of deflating completely. Good character-driven wrasslin. ***1/4
SANADA vs. Toru Yano (Round 2)
Best Yano match since his G1 EPIC from last year with Kenny Omega and a lot of it had to do with the understated comedy genius of SANADA. For such a stoic dude, he had a LOT of good ideas for a comedy blockbuster: the endless rolling cradle to kick off the match, the constant Paradise lock attempts and best of all the ODE-TO-ONRYO ref-count-stoppage that brought me all the way back to the Super J-Cup 2000, simultaneously filling me with delight and making me feel a hundred years old. All of the Yano tropes were done well, including some particularly effective countout teases. The post-match bit with SANADA putting everyone (including the ref and young lion Yagi) in the Paradise lock was some high-level Osaka Pro brilliance. I dug all of this. ***
Kota Ibushi vs. Zack Sabre Jr. (Round 2)
A lot of the top New Japan guys have their best matches when completely thrown out of their element, forced to face insurmountable odds (see: Okada vs. Shibata, all of the Tanahashi vs. Suzuki matches). ZSJ brings this element of danger to the table, forcing established guys to switch up their gameplan and struggle for their lives. It worked well with Naito and it worked even better with Ibushi: this match was tremendous.
Not a lot of wrestlers can make early-match mat wrestling look dangerous and exciting rather than time-filling, but ZSJ is one of those guys. The crowd winces at every wrist-lock and basic hold because Sabre’s resourcefulness has been so well established in New Japan continuity. Right from the start, they worked the very clever story of Zack having a bonkers submission answer to all of Ibushi’s spots, but not being able to go toe to toe with him in the striking department. This led to some super refreshing and very un-New Japan sequences where Ibushi kept trying to lead Zack into classic Fighting Spirit Strike Exchanges but ZSJ was hesitant to trade shots and kept trying to grab on to a nerve hold or some shit, twisting the New Japan Main Event mold like he’s twisting hunks into submission.
Much like in the Naito match, the counters in this thing were in-sane: Zack countering Moonsaults with Triangle holds, snapping on Octopus hold out of nowhere like it’s as easy as putting on a wrist-lock, Ibushi Powerbombing his way out of submissions. So much great stuff. I loved Zack finally being able to muster some solid strikes on Ibushi during the finish, hitting hard with that Penalty kick and slaps, showing some in-match progression. The actual finish, which played off the Ibushi/YOSHI-HASHI ending brilliantly, was pure magic: Zack being able to reverse Ibushi’s cross-arm German suplex/Kamigoye combo into the NASTIEST double-armbar thing for the ref stop. We are truly witnessing a mini-G1 Climax in March (#blessed). Great stuff! ****1/4
Hiroshi Tanahashi vs. Juice Robinson (Semi-Finals)
A large portion of this match is Tanahashi doing everything in his power to turn the crowd against him and it is fascinating to watch unfold because Korakuen just WON’T HAVE IT. They are in full adoration mode and simply refuse to boo Tana no matter what he does. And God knows he acts like a proper dick for the entire first half of this thing: blowing off the handshake, screwing Juice on clean breaks, smashing the leg in the ring-post Bret Hart style and last but not least: SHUSHING RED SHOES. There’s no doubt in my mind that the match would’ve benefited from the crowd turning on Tana as he had intended, but this was still great stuff all around.
Juice does an amazing acting job reacting to Tana’s heelishness and strikes the perfect balance between frustration and the desire to earn his hero/mentor’s respect. I must say it again, the dude has some of the best facial expressions since 1996 Shinjiro Otani. Really smartly-worked comeback from Juice after getting his leg destroyed, gradually getting his spots in and emoting like crazy to FINALLY get the crowd behind him. A few highlights: the killer Cannonball in the guardrail, amazing sell-job of the Texas cloverleaf, using Tana’s own High Fly Flows against him. It all felt high-stakes without going overboard, similar to Tana/Taichi.
The place is ready to blow by the last few minutes and the match ends just at the right moment, Tana eventually catching Juice with a murderous Dragon suplex before putting him out of his misery with the Double High Fly Flow. Dug the post-match show of respect between the two guys. The entire post-match Air Guitar/Crowd Hugging session is absolutely out of this world insane and fully explains why the fans never turned on Tana. This was his first Korakuen Hall main event in a long while and these people came out to see their hero triumph, play some god damn air guitar and wipe his sweat on their towels. Love wrestling. ****
SANADA vs. Zack Sabre Jr. (Semi-Finals)
The story here is that after spending the last two rounds dominating dudes with his superior technical wizardry, ZSJ has finally found someone who can go hold for hold with him on the mat. This guy is Mr. Cold Skull himself, and this might be his best New Japan performance yet. Whenever watching SANADA, you always get the feeling that the guy has all the talent in the world, but that he’s never showing his full potential, which makes him even more intriguing.
We mostly know him as the stoic guy with a classy Keiji Muto homage move-set, but here he opens up a whole new side of his wrestling vocabulary by working an almost entirely mat-based match and coming off as a genius grappler, the only dude so far capable of frustrating ZSJ on the mat. Milano does some DEEP ANALYSIS on commentary for this one, referring to both Volk Han and the old T2P Llave submission style that he was trained in.
SANADA’s growing cockiness and overall infatuation with the Paradise lock ends up costing him big time as Zack easily counters it into a cross armbreaker and then stays focused on the arm, exploiting SANADA’s new weakness to the max. There are some ridiculously fluid reversal sequences in this match, too many to go through: but SANADA slapping on the Skull End out of Zack’s Japanese Leg Roll Clutch was certainly up there. Red Shoes weirdly screws up a Tiger suplex near-fall but SANADA and ZSJ still manage to work a wild ending stretch filled with huge moments until SANADA finally taps to a whacked-out double armbar submission. A mat wrestling-based 30 minute match that was never not exciting, worked around the clear story of SANADA being the only guy to have ‘’figured out’’ ZSJ and getting overly cocky in the process and losing the battle. We’re seeing some absolute star-making performances in this New Japan Cup. ****1/4
Hiroshi Tanahashi vs. Zack Sabre Jr. (Finals)
Where to even begin with this match? So much layered story-telling going on at all times. To put it plainly, this match might have the smartest layout of the tournament, and God knows we’ve seen some smart matches this year. Every turning point makes perfect sense: Zack playing with Tana on the mat, then moving towards the injured bicep, Tanahashi fighting back but hurting his knee on the High Fly Attack dive, which sets-up Sabre switching his gameplan and going after the knee. Every New Japan guy tried a different strategy against Zack: Ibushi went for the strikes, SANADA tried to hang with him on the mat. Tana’s early strategy here is my favorite of all because it speaks volumes about the guy’s passion for old-school wrestling: EXTENDED HEADLOCKS, BABY.
Tana’s also the one Cup entrant with the most experience facing ZSJ in the ring. They met in the G1 and had a title match for the Intercontinental belt. This flips the script on some of the usual Zack match tropes as this time around, he’s not the only one to come up with all the crazy counters: Tanahashi now has a whole truckload of them up his sleeve. Tanahashi dragon screwing his way out of an Octopus hold was one particularly cool moment, but my favorite was him countering a guillotine choke by just DRILLING ZSJ with locomotion Twist n’ Shouts. Just to be clear, Zack also counters a High Fly Attack with a freaking kneebar in mid-air in this match, so his counter game is way up there as well.
Then you have all of these great little pro-wrestling moments that add so much quality: Zack kicking away at the injured bicep like a SOCIALIST VEGAN BRAT, the camera shots of concerned Tanahashi fans fearing for his safety, Tana trying to fight back with European uppercuts but wincing in pain after every strike. The entire ending stretch is 100% off the charts and the crowd is nuclear for all of it. Zack’s arm-crossed Japanese Legroll clutch is possibly my favorite spot in wrestling. It’s also quite ironic that Tanahashi trying to use his own version of the Legroll clutch is what ends up costing him the match, as Zack counters with an absolutely brutal looking ORIENTEERING WITH NAPALM DEATH and our hero taps out.
This year’s New Japan Cup turned ZSJ into a new top-level threat and this match was just the icing on the cake. Incredible pacing, selling, counters and an edge-of-your-seat dramatic finale. Zack now looks like a credible contender for Okada’s belt while Broken Down Ace Tanahashi keeps marching down the Wrestler of the Year warpath, possibly more popular than ever judging by the crowd reaction in all of his Cup matches. ****1/2
